


An Offer Worth Considering

by toficornottofic



Category: Ender Series - Orson Scott Card
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 23:56:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8821342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toficornottofic/pseuds/toficornottofic
Summary: In a world with no time to create a third child, Peter and Valentine needed to be reconsidered





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DWEmma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DWEmma/gifts).



_“So, there’s the daughter...”_  
  
_“Far too soft. Not at all suited to our purposes.”_  
  
_“You rejected the boy for being too hard.”_  
  
_“We rejected the boy for being a young psychopath. It’s not the same thing.”_  
  
_“Well, those are your choices. Pick one or look elsewhere.”_  
  
_“We could try again.”_  
  
_“The girl already was our chance to try again. We were running out of time three years ago. Now we are here, what we have is what there is to choose from and there is no time to try again. Pick one or look elsewhere. Or we can all sit and chew our nails until we get invaded, but that would be up to you.”_  
  
**  
They had known what was going on when Peter had opened the door to the man in uniform. They were young, but that didn’t mean they were stupid. Still, that hadn’t stopped their mother hustling them through to the hallway and shutting the door on them there as she called their father, as though an inability to hear the conversation might render them immune to the outcome.  
  
The intention had been that they should go to their rooms, but as that had never been explicitly stated they sat on the stairs instead. Side by side but separated as though an invisible wall lay between them they listened for clues of what might be going on downstairs.  
  
“It will be me,” Peter said. His tone was carefully neutral but Valentine saw the way he clenched his fists until his fingernails left neat crescent indents in his palms. “I’m the one who leads things. It ought to be me.”  
  
“If it was going to be you they would have come years ago,” she said placidly, knowing she risked his rage by doing so. “They think you’re too violent.”  
  
Peter snorted. “They’re not looking for someone to read the Buggers a bedtime story and tuck them in. There’s nothing wrong with violence when it get things done.”  
  
They fell silent momentarily as they heard their parents voices rise, protesting. Their father was talking - not quite shouting, but loud, as though he couldn’t get his point across any other way. Their mother, by contrast, was shrill, frantic.  
  
As her voice broke into a sob, Peter’s head dropped for a moment, shoulders slumping. “That’s it then,” he said, unable to quite keep the bitterness out of his tone. “It’s you.”  
  
“You don’t know that,” Valentine protested, positions abruptly switched. Suddenly what had seemed only the vaguest of possibilities was a reality; suddenly she was facing leaving everything she ever knew and she knew with stone-hard certainty that she didn’t want to. Peter, perhaps, might have left home and family with never a glance back. Valentine was too attached to her mother’s soft kisses; her father’s rougher hugs.  
  
He shook his head scornfully. “She wouldn’t cry for me.”  
  
Another pause, silence as they waited to see if either of them were to be called downstairs but the voices had dropped back to indecipherable murmurs.  
  
“You can’t go,” Peter said finally, his tone dipping towards the threatening tone he used whenever adults weren’t listening and he seemed to not be going to get his own way. “If you go.. I’ll hurt things, and you won’t be here to fix them, or even just put them out of their misery. It won’t just be animals this time either. I know all the friends you love best at school. Children can have accidents -- children have accidents all the time and no-one thinks anything of it. If you go, I’ll make you responsible for all that.”  
  
Valentine looked at him sideways for a long moment, knowing what he warned of was nothing less than truth. The silence stretched with nothing but the tick of the hallway clock to break it as she considered her response, remembering all the playfights that hadn’t really been playful at all. Peter when bored could be frightening. Peter acting out of malicious revenge would be a monster, and there would be no way to talk him out of it. There was no persuasion, no threat she could use in return.  
  
Finally she gently nudged his knee with hers, breaking the space between them “I’ll miss you too.”  
  
**  
The man from the army talked for a long time. Valentine tried to listen but her attention kept wandering. There was her father’s stern face, her mother - red-eyed but trying valiantly to pretend she was pleased for her small daughter, Peter scowling and not even trying to pretend. Eventually even the man must have realised this was too much distraction for even the cleverest five year old and paused, clearing his throat. “Perhaps I could speak to Valentine alone?”  
  
Her mother started to protest, but he held up his hand. “I’m not going to kidnap your daughter,” he said firmly. “But this decision needs to be hers and no-one else’s. I would prefer it if everyone else left, please.”  
  
It could not in any way have been mistaken for a request.  
  
He waited until they had left and then trod heavily towards the door, giving Peter more than enough time to flee up the stairs before he opened it. Only once he was certain there was no-one else listening did he return to his seat.  
  
“What do you want, Valentine?” He asked the question as though he meant it. “You’ve heard what we need. I think you know what your family would like for you, but none of that matters. What do you want?”  
  
“You need to take Peter.” She didn’t think the words before she spoke them, they were just there, the obvious answer to that question.  
  
The man’s eyebrows went up. “That’s very unselfish of you, and I’m sure it’s what your brother would prefer, but Peter has been rejected for other reasons. I’m afraid giving away your place to him is not an option.”  
  
“No. I didn’t mean that.” What had she meant? So often with Valentine the first words were instinct and she had to think for a moment to understand why. “You should take both of us.”  
  
He was frowning now, and she suspected he might already be reconsidering his offer. “Battle School is not a place where little girls can take their big brothers to protect them, Valentine.”  
  
The idea of Peter protecting anyone was almost painfully amusing and she shook her head again. “Peter doesn’t protect anyone but Peter,” she said flatly and wanted to laugh at his startled look - clearly he hadn’t expected that tone from a five year old. “But Peter knows how to attack things where I don’t - I can organise people to protect themselves but Peter knows how to take them apart. You do want us to take them apart, don’t you?”  
  
“We don’t actually expect you to already know everything before you step foot in Battle School,” the man said, but he was looking harassed and Valentine almost felt sorry for him because he didn’t know that she had already won. Now it was simply a matter of talking to him, putting it into words that he could present to his superiors about how they would be stronger as a team than they ever would be apart - the exact argument about why that was so was unimportant.  
  
Because it was all lies anyway - no, not lies, but unimportant. Perhaps the Buggers existed and perhaps they didn’t, but Valentine could verify that Peter did exist and was a bigger risk than any adult would ever believe - or at least on earth he was. People thought small and young meant harmless but Valentine knew Peter, knew how he could break people and leave them fractured and helpless just for the fun of it.  
  
In Battle School, surrounded by children who were older and maybe even smarter things might be different.  
  
She watched as the General spoke to Peter, watched her brother’s face fill with surprise and delight and suspicion. Yes, Peter was smart, and he knew that a chance too good to be true probably was but he would take it anyway because some things were too good to turn down.  
  
More than once he glanced towards Valentine, reluctant gratitude in his expression. Reluctant only because Peter didn’t like owing anything to anyone and could only see in a kindly action something that might one day be used against him.  
  
Of course, he couldn’t possibly guess that her motivation was simply to remove Peter. From her family, from the world, from everything she held dear and if she had to go with him then that was a payment she would willingly make.  
  
Come away with me, Peter, she told him silently. Come away, and maybe we’ll save the world together and maybe we won’t. Either way I’ll be saving the world from you, and that will be close enough for me.


End file.
